Thursday, August 24, 2006

Vegetable Soup

I made some of the best vegetable soup I've ever had the other night. It was basically a two-day operation.

First night: Cooked a whole free-range chicken that I bought at a local farmer's market from this place. I just sprinkled the chicken with olive oil, unrefined sea salt, and pepper, and cooked at 350 for a little over an hour. Simple, but delicious.

After supper, I took all the chicken bones, and made some broth. This was also simple: Just put them in a big pot, cover with water (probably half a gallon?), add a bunch of salt and pepper, and boil for 2-3 hours.

When the broth was done, I added it to a pot of left-over brown rice from supper (this came with a lot of spices added, and my wife had cooked the rice in beef broth, so it was already very flavorful).

Next night: I took the chicken broth and rice mixture, added two more cups of the rice (eyeballing to guess how much rice would work with that amount of broth). I also added: Organic baby carrots, organic diced tomatoes, an onion, more unrefined sea salt (to taste). I also chopped up a huge zucchini from my garden (I had one plant this year that produced some zucchinis that were about as big around as a baseball bat). Then I let it all simmer together for probably a couple of hours.

2 Comments:

Personally, I'm an "old school" stock maker; I accumulate carcasses of poultry, beef bones, and the like in the freezer, and when I've got enough to fill the stock pot, it all goes on the stove over night.

The resulting stock has enough gelatin in it that you can dribble it across the room once it sets up. And there's nothing quite like a stock of turkey, chicken, duck, and beef combined.

One trick my sister, (Graduated summa cum laude from the Culinary Institute of Florida.) introduced me to is dandy for soup making: Cut up all your vegetables before you make the stock, and throw all the trimmings in with the bones: Carrot heads and peelings, onion skins, the base of the cellery, everything.

It's amazing how much vegetable flavor that puts into the stock without requiring the vegetables you eat to be the least bit over-cooked.

Wow, you're really going organic and natural, aren't ya! What spurred this on? Are you grinding your own wheat for bread also?? Buying any carob chips or making honey ice-cream yet? (hehehe) I'd love to come over for dinner....sounds like you've become quite the chef/gardener. I'm working on my bread-making, actually, and although I don't grind wheat yet, I do use a lot of whole wheat. Rebekah (yeah, your sister)